Earth moving machines such as track type tractor, wheeled scraper etc. are employed in various industries, such as agriculture, construction, and mining. These machines are utilized for a variety of tasks such as for excavating, hauling, pushing material, and dumping excavated material, and are affected by working conditions of a work site. For example, when the machines are utilized for pushing materials such as heavy rocks then it may take long time for a machine to push materials, thus, leading to a decrease in productivity and/or efficiency of tasks.
In order to increase the productivity and/or the efficiency of the tasks, typically, another machine is used in collaboration with a first machine. For example, in a case, when the first machine is facing difficulty in pushing the materials such as heavy rocks, another machine is utilized which may either push the first machine by engaging at the rear of the first machine, or may pull the first machine by engaging at the front of the first machine. In order to fulfill the collaboration between two machines or among multiple machines, the coupling assembly (e.g. hitch, hook, bail or pushing pad) are installed on the earth moving machines. However, the contact between two machines, during collaboration, is difficult to control. The uncontrolled contact increases fatigue in machine components and decreases useful life of machines. Moreover, the unpredictable load condition during a loading process can also result in sudden uncontrolled contact between the machines working in collaboration. Currently, such uncontrolled contacts between the machines are controlled by various techniques such as by careful maneuvering of the two machines, or by the coupling assembly. But, such techniques do not eliminate the uncontrolled contacts between the machines which results in large impact force and affect the machine productivity. Therefore, the current techniques fail to control the impact force. Also, the impact energy, arising out of uncontrolled contacts, is wasted and results in fatigue of the machine components, and decreases the useful life of machines.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,170,756, hereinafter referred to as '756 reference, discloses an excavating system utilizing a machine-to-machine communication system for a fleet of machines, including at least two machines to effect controlled contact between at least a first machine and a second machine. The controlled contact is achieved by decreasing either the speed of the first machine or the speed of the second machine, and thus affects machine productivity. Moreover, the '756 reference discloses that high relative speed between two machines during push-pull operations leads to uncontrolled contact which results in large impact force. However, the '756 reference fails to disclose recovery of the impact energy during the push-pull operations. Therefore, there is a need for a system to control the impact force, and to recover the impact energy.